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The Authoritarian Origins of Policing in America

I’m fairly certain that everyone, regardless of political affiliation, can agree that there is a problem with policing institutions in America. Every day, I read of yet another dead innocent American at the hands of the police. I, like many of my fellow Americans, feel a sense of fear and not safety when I pass a police officer on the street. Am I violating some absurdly specific law? Have I done anything to warrant his attention? However, it hasn’t always been this way. What happened?

To understand both what’s wrong with law enforcement today and how to fix it, we need to examine the history and evolution of police forces in the United States. Everything I am going to say in the next few paragraphs comes directly from a scholarly article written by Gary Potter of Eastern Kentucky University.

Before the establishment of the first municipal police department in 1838, law enforcement was a laissez faire enterprise in America. It began with night watchmen. These men would be posted at various locations around any given city to stop any crime they may see taking place. These men were supervised by a constable, who organized their activities. However, this was not a very effective system. Although the night watch position was supposed to be voluntary, it was often forced upon miscreants as a kind of communal punishment. Night watchmen were often inebriated while on duty. As Potter states, “Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures.”

Law enforcement officers were paid by the fees from the warrants they served. This creates an important incentive system: law enforcement officers are incentivized to catch criminals because this is the source of their paycheck. However, they did not have the authority to simply apprehend anyone they may think is committing a crime. They could only arrest someone who had an active warrant out for his arrest, which has to be procured from a judge. This means that this system of law enforcement was highly reactionary: officers only became involved after the crime had been committed. This means that a citizen who had been wronged would have to procure enough evidence to show a constable that he or she has been robbed, beaten, etc. The constable then had to take this sufficient evidence before a judge in order to obtain the arrest warrant. This means two crucial things: one could only be arrested for committing a crime that had a victim, and one could only be detained after the crime had already occurred. This ensures that everyone is always innocent until proven guilty, and that the principles of self-ownership and personal liberty are well protected from the enforcement arm of the state.

However, this all changed in 1838, when Boston became the first city in America to establish a full time police force. By the 1880s all major American cities had municipal police forces. Dr. Potter explains what these departments have in common: “These “modern police” organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).” However, law enforcement followed a different path in the South. Dr. Potter explains this as well:

“In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing “Jim Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.”

Clearly, law enforcement in the South did not arise from any sort of honorable “desire to protect the populace.” These facts beg the question: why 1838? Why were the mid-1800’s a breeding ground for the creation of municipal police forces? Although a massive crime wave would seem to be the only logical explanation, this is not the case. There was no pandemic threat of overwhelming crime. So, why did police departments all spring up around the same time? Dr. Potter’s answer displays the authoritarian roots of the modern police state:

“More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.” What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the “collective good” (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state.”

Thus, the truth arises: modern police forces are a result of extremely effective crony capitalism and the authoritarian desires of the political elites. They created the modern police force out of a concerted effort to coerce the masses to ascribe to what the political elites of the time believe is the greatest “collective good.” This concept flies in the face of the principles of personal liberty and voluntary cooperation our society was founded upon. Furthermore, what gives the wealthy few the right to assume the dictation of the lives of millions of sovereign individuals? The injustice in the origins of modern police are striking. However, the problems only get worse. Dr. Potter expounds upon the latent inequality at work in the early days of police work:

“The only effective political strategy available to exploited workers was what economic elites referred to as “rioting,” which was actually a primitive form of what would become union strikes against employers (Silver 1967). The modern police force not only provided an organized, centralized body of men (and they were all male) legally authorized to use force to maintain order, it also provided the illusion that this order was being maintained under the rule of law, not at the whim of those with economic power.

Defining social control as crime control was accomplished by raising the specter of the “dangerous classes.” The suggestion was that public drunkenness, crime, hooliganism, political protests and worker “riots” were the products of a biologically inferior, morally intemperate, unskilled and uneducated underclass. The consumption of alcohol was widely seen as the major cause of crime and public disorder. The irony, of course, is that public drunkenness didn’t exist until mercantile and commercial interests created venues for and encouraged the commercial sale of alcohol in public places. This underclass was easily identifiable because it consisted primarily of the poor, foreign immigrants and free blacks (Lundman 1980: 29). This isolation of the “dangerous classes” as the embodiment of the crime problem created a focus in crime control that persists to today, the idea that policing should be directed toward “bad” individuals, rather than social and economic conditions that are criminogenic in their social outcomes.

In addition, the creation of the modern police force in the United States also immutably altered the definition of the police function. Policing had always been a reactive enterprise, occurring only in response to a specific criminal act. Centralized and bureaucratic police departments, focusing on the alleged crime-producing qualities of the “dangerous classes” began to emphasize preventative crime control. The presence of police, authorized to use force, could stop crime before it started by subjecting everyone to surveillance and observation. The concept of the police patrol as a preventative control mechanism routinized the insertion of police into the normal daily events of everyone’s life, a previously unknown and highly feared concept in both England and the United States (Parks 1976).”

As Dr. Potter makes clear, modern policing methods were born out of rampant racism and a desire to suppress American citizen’s constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceably assemble. I need not expound upon the plethora of gross injustices intrinsic to this immoral system of law enforcement. The police were created as a brutal enforcement tool of the political elite. Can you imagine the horror Thomas Jefferson or John Adams would view this revelation with?

Despite its foundational racism and inequality, this form of policing still persists in America today. There have been many attempts at reform, but few have had any lasting impact. Dr. Potter explains these reform attempts in great detail, but for brevity’s sake I will leave them with him. Dr. Potter does, however, point out an important fact: the overwhelming body of scholarly literature finds that the police have virtually no impact on crime. I’ll say that again: all of the liberties you have lost to the cause of “public safety” and “reduced crime” have had no impact whatsoever.

Now, let’s fast forward to today: what kind of impact do the police still have on our society? SWAT teams conduct approximately 80,000 no-knock raids per year. Even though America only consists of 5% of the world population, we have almost 25% of the world’s prison population. We have 725 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, which is the highest in the world. The world average is 145 per 100,000 citizens. Nearly 2.2 million Americans are behind bars. The racial disparities within our system are even more appalling. Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites. Civil forfeiture laws allow police officers to take all of your physical belongs under any “reasonable suspicion” of any criminal activity. You then have to sue the police and prove your innocence to get your belongings back. You will be lucky to receive 75% of everything they took from you, if you are able to win the lawsuit.

Clearly, a massive change is needed in the way we, as a culture, enforce property rights and punish aggressors. Only through a proper understanding of the history of policing institutions can we suggest meaningful and ethical remedies to the sickness that currently plagues criminal justice in the United States of America.

“I’m fairly certain that everyone, regardless of political affiliation, can agree that there is a problem with policing institutions in America.”

It’s odd that we have the growing popularity of statism (hillary/bernie/trump) while at the same time have the growing effects of a State controlled environment, no?

First, I would suggest the police problem is not really the problem. The problem is rarely the problem. What we identify as a problem, more often then not, is only a symptom of the problem, and there can be many different symptoms that manifest themselves in different places in different ways, that all come from of the same problem.

The task at hand, is to correctly identify the problem, then you can solve the problem, and solve countless symptoms with a single stroke.

The problem is we have an intellectual problem (actually, all our problems are intellectual problems, now that I’m intellectually thinking about it…hmmm).

When will we learn that force begets force, that begets force, that begets force…as we decline down the toilet bowl of human history once again…by force.

The greater the force, the more powerful the flush. It’s mutually relative.

There is absolutely no way to succeed by force. It may seem so at first, but it is not sustainable, as it will begin to rot our souls first, and then our actions and then our community and then our brotherhood…which it has done, and is doing.

There is your cop problem. It’s a symptom of a far more fundamental problem that has been growing for quite a few years, that is equal to the growing state of force.

But who needs brotherhood and mutual respect and voluntary co-operation, that manifests from the bottom up, when you have force and a populace ignorant of its effects, eager to force another’s will to his ways, to make the world a better place of course, from the top down, in their hard march toward so called “fairness” and beautiful utopia.

This is an excellent article, Trey. Now write one about how the police morphed from “peace officers” to “law enforcers” to “occupying army.” That happened in my lifetime. Peace officers to law enforcers happened under the cover of the drug war. Law enforcers to occupying army happened under the cover of the war on terrer.

A few months ago, I was walking down the street in this sleepy town of retirees–average age 85, population 7,000. In front of a house, i saw a group of cops (5or 6ish) hiding behind some kind of armored car. About a dozen people were watching from a block away. I asked what was going on and one guy answered that he thought is was some kind of drill. I said, “Great, that’s our tax dollars being flushed down the drain.” The woman next to me said that it made her feel safer.

So what’s the real problem, tptb and their nonstop propaganda, the nasty cops or the people like this brainwashed woman? All of ’em, I guess.

On a related note, after the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement protests and marches, which scared the crap out of tptb, a couple of very important changes occurred that just about nobody knows. First, public assembly got an awful lot harder, with all kinds of permits and fees required, unconstitutionally I might add. Think Occupy Wall Street and how they were confined in Zuccotti Park which is private property. Second, the avenue of emigrating for draft dodging has been virtually cut off, with treaties negotiated between the US and nearly every country on earth. Does the wall across the southern border take on a new meaning to you now?

Law abiding citizens, who make up a majority of the populace do not agree. Nearly all of the L/E deaths of suspects has nothing to do with a police state or race, but everything due to people who are being lied to from their parents to the president. No, you can not trace the police force back to the days of slavery in the United States. While community members may have been hired for such a position, it has nothing to do with the L/E community of today.

Look at the rising crime rates. Fed by fatherless children and a governmental body that does all it can to keep a man from being a father by paying the mother for being single and taking it all away, if she marries. When these children grow up, many do so in a setting that has no boundaries, creating little monsters who become big trouble.

The prisons are full of people who do not wish to obey the law. Let’s here from the victims who see many charges dropped against the suspect to get a plea deal, or the violent offender who is released early and kills again. Look this up, this is fact!

The writer of this article tries to call this a police state. How about the U.S. being a society where it is now okay to violate the law and when caught, resist arrest, resist prosecution, resist penalties and blame those who are there protecting the citizens who are doing right. Ask the victims of these criminals! I dare you! Go ask them. They want these criminals locked up and for the key to be thrown away. Now the only punishment is they can’t see the latest movie when it first arrives in the theaters. Every need it taken care of in the prisons. Food, shelter, health care and education. People do not mind going to jail and many look forward to it. Such a sad state to be in!

Well over 99% of the L/E related deaths could have been avoided had the suspect obeyed the law then not resisted arrest. I am not saying every L/E death was justified and there are a few that are totally the officers fault. Those officers are nearly always sent to jail.

Looking forward to clear and precise responses.

I imagine people waking up tomorrow and saying; “I will not commit a crime today, and I will become gainfully employed (those with out a true physical or mental disability), or students who say, I will go to school and get the education that is there present for my young mind! Do this and we can actually get rid of nearly all of our L/E officers and we will see many of our prisons close.

The problem is not the law enforcement community, but the individuals who are violating the law and those who decide to back them.